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Behold the miniature African republic of Burundi, land of a thousand
hills and tens of thousands of small arms. Arms proliferation among civilians,
military, and ex-combatants across Burundi is a central factor in the
continued instability plaguing the country, undermining fledgling peace
efforts poised to end ten years of fighting.
In July, an unnamed UN agency asked me to spend two months in Burundi
documenting the impact of small arms proliferation on women. What had
the flood of guns, grenades and RPGs done to female livelihoods, family
structure, women’s physical security and reproductive health? Were
they predominantly passive victims, or had women played an active role
in the fighting by smuggling arms, acting as scouts, or penetrating enemy
lines? I wasn’t sure how transparent my informants would be, as
Burundians are famously guarded and oblique. Would women be willing to
discuss their experiences with armed rape and physical assault? Would
they tell me if they had guns in the home and how they used them?
This was my fourth visit to Burundi. Last time, in 2001, I spent three
months interviewing civilian war-wounded in a free medical clinic run
by Doctors Without Borders. Our aim was to document and publicize civilian
atrocities by rebel and government troops, as Burundi’s tragedy
rarely figures in western news media. Although male combatants were always
doing the shooting, eyewitnesses claimed, casualties included equal numbers
of women and children. But that was back in 2001, when the war had little
prospect of resolution. Now, miraculously, the possibility for peace was
near. The disarmament and demobilization of national military and rebels
were underway. Why then were so many people, civilians and ex-combatants
alike, still acquiring arms to loot, attack, rape and kill their compatriots?
“Killing,” an older women sighed, “has become entirely
banal.”
As I arrived and passed through airport customs, I noticed familiar bullet
holes in the glass partitions of the breezy metal hangar. Flashes of familiar
sensations resurfaced as I recalled the Burundi I knew in 2001, with its
ubiquitous halo of death. Now I sensed a refreshing friendliness in people’s
demeanor. Drivers, even policemen, were more open to conversation, offered
more of themselves. Foreigners seemed less obsessed with watching their
backs. As we drove through Bujumbura’s noisy streets, the economic
torpor I remembered was gone. Small businesses, hotels, and restaurants
had opened around town. According to all accounts, the country was on
a credible path to a sustainable peace. Yet few people I met were confident
of its ultimate success.
I traversed the country in armed military convoys, spending three to
four days in towns where UN peacekeepers were based. I tried to meet as
many female leaders, human rights activists, medical staff and trauma
personnel, journalists, government, military, and civil society representatives
as possible. Politicians and military leaders were cautiously optimistic,
but no one else expressed any confidence in the political process, let
alone their fellow citizens. “Between Burundians, a deep distrust
has set in,” a counselor in Gitega told me.
In Ruyigi, on the Tanzanian border, the female leaders I met with initially
denied arms possession in their homes. Instead, they related in detail
the ways guns and weapons have ruined women’s lives. Finally, one
of the women conceded, “Of course arms are everywhere in Ruyigi.
We can’t afford to trust anyone because we have no idea which way
the country is headed.” Independent journalists I met estimated
that at least 80% of all urban households were armed. Francine, the director
of a radio station whose programming is devoted to reconciliation between
Hutu and Tutsi, characterized the general sentiment. “People no
longer carry weapons because of the war, everyone’s armed to protect
themselves from banditry, assault, and robbery.” Unknown assailants
had tossed grenades into Francine’s home two months earlier.
In Palestine, Sri Lanka and El Salvador—armed conflicts of equal
scale and duration to that of Burundi—women are or were active in
the pursuit of military objectives, including acts of terrorism whose
primary targets were civilian. This was difficult to confirm in Burundi.
Revenge and the ‘settling of accounts’ are common phenomena,
as impunity is rife and the legal system in shambles. Rape survivors sometimes
send their brothers to kill the rapist when the latter’s identity
is known.
Quantifying the number of armed rapes in the country is difficult, for
while raping itself is not taboo, discussing it openly is. The victim,
not the rapist, is the guilty party. As one rape counselor told me, “With
or without arms, women in this province cannot admit to being raped.”
Rape survivors, when found out, are blamed, rejected and abandoned by
their husbands and families. When undesired pregnancies result, offspring
are rejected and often abandoned by the mother. Fear of rape-related stigmas
can lead women to self-abort, which in turn entail medical complications,
even maternal mortality. Silence about rape is preferable, women told
me, because the threat of social rejection is more dreadful than the rape
itself, as it lasts a lifetime.
Another gender-specific consequence of armed violence is the high number
of widowed young mothers trying to support their family alone. In Burundi,
widows have no inheritance rights and lose all belongings and property
to the late husband’s family. Dire poverty and desperation are the
direct result of widowhood, and many widows turn to prostitution for survival.
When Kalashnikovs aren’t enough
In Ruyigi province, the district commander was away so I met with his
assistant, a high-ranking judiciary police officer. We talked of recent
ambushes and rural banditry generally, and his ability to control it.
In the dim light of his mud brick office were piles of rotting documents,
mostly folders stuffed with decades of bookkeeping. As my eyes adjusted
to the light, I noticed stacks of what looked like rudimentary weapons
in the corner.
Burundians occasionally mentioned a handmade firearm they called ‘mugobore’,
but I had yet to see one. When the Hutu rebel movements began in 1994,
they depended on their rural support base to supply them with weapons.
Industry-grade weapons were scarce and expensive, so most attackers used
machetes, the preferred weapon of Rwanda’s genocidaires.
Rural Hutu farmers began fabricating mugobore to supply the rebels. Mugobore
are artisan rifles first developed by a Tanzanian paramilitary force called
the Basungusungu, who patrolled their border with Burundi against illegal
trafficking. Mugobore fabrication spread into Burundi rural regions. They’re
now the preferred weapon of rural bandits operating in the war’s
margins, preying on fellow civilians.
I asked the officer what kinds of weapons were most in circulation. He
pointed to a pile of bicycle handlebars, rubber straps and blocks of wood
in the corner, walked over and pulled out what looked like a toy rifle.
He demonstrated its firing mechanism, not a trigger but a coiled spring
pulled from the butt of the rifle, and released it. He then threw it back
onto the pile and turned back to his desk. I was fascinated, but for the
officer the mugobore was an infinitely recurring irritation. I asked him
what impact these rudimentary firearms were having on the rural population.
Were they lethal, or just crude props to intimidate the unarmed? Would
he allow me to take a photo?
There would be no photo, he said impatiently. Bullets fired from mugobore
have no accuracy, he explained, and to injure or kill the target must
be point blank. As to the significance of mugobore, the officer was more
philosophical. Mugobore are the poor man’s temporary escape from
poverty. With a mugobore, anyone can show up at a busy rural market in
broad daylight, shoot in the air to scare people off, and collect what
money and goods remain. Since women do most of the trading in rural markets,
they are the most affected by these raids. In cases of armed rape, a woman
is approached with a mugobore, the demand for sex is tacit. Generally
she yields, and remains silent for fear of reprisal.
Our interview was over; it was getting dark. No photo, no matter—I
would find another way to document the mugobore. That evening, I asked
a journalist if he could help me get one on the black market. Around midnight
he returned with a seller, but no mugobore. We haggled over the price,
and agreed on 10,000 Burundian francs (about $10). Proud of his wares,
the seller smiled and taunted me: “Hey, mugobore represent a genuine
technological development for Burundi—now we can make our own weapons!
We just need you westerners for bullets!”
The following morning I had to return to Bujumbura. My seller never appeared.
I consoled myself that the capitol was full of mugobore and I could find
one easily, take a photo or perhaps buy one, depending on my research
appetite. At the end of our long drive across the country, my driver and
I ditched the military escort and stopped for a meal on the outskirts
of Bujumbura. Steve, the driver, seemed tense and distracted as we ate.
Towards the end of the meal he asked the cook to get something out of
the car, handing him the keys. We finished eating and I went back to the
car. Steve stopped to talk to friends eating at another table. At the
car, I noticed immediately that we had been robbed. My laptop, passport,
all belongings and $3000 in cash were gone. Steve feigned innocence and
denied any collusion in the theft. The UN refused to compensate my losses,
insisting that the theft was my own negligence.
My hopes to acquire a mugobore disappeared once I began dealing with
passport applications, police reports, UN bureaucracy, ad nauseum. I came
down with malaria, and felt disgusted with Burundi. It was not the first
time I had been cleaned out there. Guns had not been involved, but the
irony of being a victim of petty crime while investigating its pervasiveness
in the country was not lost on me. A sense of irony is paltry compensation
for gross violation; I felt more livid than ironic in the days after the
theft. My passing mugobore infatuation now felt grotesquely self-indulgent.
Ethnic carcass
A few days later, on Friday, August 13th, 160 Congolese Tutsi refugees
were massacred in their camp just five miles inside the Burundian border.
They had fled there following attacks on nearby Bukavu, in eastern Congo,
six weeks before. The FNL, or Forces Nationales de Liberation, the sole
rebel faction to oppose peace negotiations with the transitional Burundian
government and other rebel groups, immediately claimed responsibility.
I saw it as a desperate act by marginalized rebels to attract international
attention, to destabilize the peace process, and to discredit the UN presence.
The massacre bears a worrisome portent for the Great Lakes region of
Africa. Government officials and international observers now talk openly
of a recurrence of ethnic atrocity not seen in the region since 1996.
Rwanda and Burundi have threatened to invade Congo if it does not control
and disarm the radical Hutu militias operating on its soil. These latter,
former genocidaires who fled from Rwanda in 1994, are now believed
to have authored the recent Tutsi massacre. Congo is profoundly disorganized
and incapable of policing its vast wilderness, an ineptitude sure to inflame
regional tensions. It was a very similar scenario in 1996, one rife with
ethnic vengeance, which led Rwanda-backed Laurent Kabila to invade Zaire
and ultimately drive President Mobutu from power. Unlike then, today’s
unprecedented degree of arms proliferation in the region will ensure an
equally massive bloodbath if political and ethnic relations deteriorate
further.
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OTR Dispatches - September, 2004